Linux development

Developing Defold applications for the Linux platform is a straight forward process with very few considerations to make.

Project settings

Linux specific application configuration is done from the Linux section of the game.project settings file.

FAQ

Q: Why is the Defold editor super small when run on a 4k or HiDPI monitor when using GNOME?

A: Change the scaling factor before running Defold. source

$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 2

Q: Why does mouse clicks on Elementary OS go through the editor onto whatever is below?

A: Start the editor like this:

$ GTK_CSD=0 ./Defold

Q: Why does the Defold editor crash when I try to create a new project, or open an existing one?

A: On certain distributions (like Ubuntu 18) there is an issue with the version of jogamp/jogl Defold uses vs. the version of Mesa on the system.

See the following reports for more information:

• https://github.com/defold/editor2-issues/issues/1905
• https://github.com/defold/editor2-issues/issues/1886

If this is your problem try the following workaround:

$ export MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=2.1
$ ./Defold

And if that doesn’t work then try (or some other version number matching your driver and larger than or equal to 2.1):

$ export MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=3.1
$ ./Defold

You may also need to specifically load libffi version 6 before starting Defold:

$ export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libffi.so.6

Q: My OpenGL drivers are outdated. Can I still use Defold?

A: Yes, it might be possible to use Defold if you enable software rendering. You can enable software rendering by setting the LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE environment variable to 1:

~/bin/Defold$ LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 ./Defold

Q: Why am I getting “com.jogamp.opengl.GLException: Graphics configuration failed” when launching Defold on Ubuntu 20.04?

A: On certain distributions there is an issue with the new Mesa drivers (Iris) when running Defold. You can try using an older version when running Defold:

$ export MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=i965
$ ./Defold

Q: Why doesn’t my Defold game start when I try to run it on Linux?

A: Check the console output in the editor. If you get the following message:

dmengine: error while loading shared libraries: libopenal.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Then you need to install libopenal1. The package name varies between distributions, and in some cases you might have to install the openal and openal-dev or openal-devel packages.

$ apt-get install libopenal-dev